On Saturday, FC Schalke 04 will play against Eintracht Braunschweig, a fellow competitor for relegation in the second division. The Royal Blues still hope to be able to turn things around. Because there is a danger lurking in the background that could plunge the traditional club into complete chaos.
“I’m also fed up when I see the results.” The new sports director of FC Schalke 04 is a royal blue legend, but at the moment the “Eurofighter”, the “fighting pig” Marc Wilmots, would probably rather hide underground. The problem: A lot has happened in the Ruhr area since his own days as a successful S04 player. Almost five years ago they closed the Prosper Haniel colliery in Bottrop, Germany’s last hard coal mine. The black coal is only a memory and is, at best, nostalgic.
And in fact: many a Schalke player these days remembers the past with a little nostalgia. Back then, in the good old tradition, the Royal Blues’ professionals traveled to a local mine at the start of the season, put on dirty helmets and drove down to the coal. When they then saw the light of day again, one or two players actually had the feeling that they now knew a little better about what a wonderful job they are able to do on the green grass every day.
Marc Wilmots knows them all too well, the trips to the mines. It is not unlikely that he would like to undertake such a trip again with the current team. Because the new sports director doesn’t have that many options to turn his S04 around in this extremely difficult situation.
“Fully in a relegation battle”
“We have to do it with this squad,” he said after the debacle at Betzenberg, when they were completely helpless and lost without a sound to a fellow competitor trying to stay in the second Bundesliga, and at the same time remarked with resignation: ” We’re in a relegation battle.” It was exactly this scenario that they wanted to prevent after a successful finish to last year – when they got seven points from three games. But then the start of the new year was a complete failure. And now even the slight hint of euphoria that was associated with Wilmots’ return to Schalke has fizzled out again.
And so, after the defeat at 1. FC Kaiserslautern last weekend, the Belgian tried to maintain the right balance between meaningless platitudes and honest words when he said, visibly exhausted: “When I came, I said: ‘Don’t dream from above, but look down.’ It would be easy for me to say: I didn’t build the team. But that doesn’t help anyone. Today seven or eight players weren’t up to par. Everyone has to think about it.”
We will be able to see whether this “thinking” has had any effect at Schalke on Saturday, when the Eintracht team with the same points will arrive from Braunschweig. The men of the traditional Lower Saxony club will bring four wins from the last five encounters into the royal blue arena as a bargaining chip. After two defeats against HSV and the Red Devils at the start of the new year, the FC Schalke 04 players are understandably unsettled – because they had actually hoped for much more, as Kenan Karaman noted in frustration after the game on the Betzenberg: “We had a “Good feeling in the preparation, but that doesn’t count, only when it comes to the three points.”
Lost faith in yourself?
Schalke is still trying to sugarcoat the situation – after all, there are still 15 games to play. But Kenan Karaman’s words (“Everyone has to question themselves in the mirror now. We don’t have to dream that we’ll climb a few places, but now work our asses off against Braunschweig”) before the game against Eintracht sound like the usual ones Phrases from a team that has slowly but surely lost faith in its own abilities. There is hardly any second opinion that the S04 squad should normally be strong enough to prevent relegation. But the problem is: On the pitch these days it’s not even remotely visible how the team could function together as a team.
And then there is something else that they would have liked to keep quiet about at Schalke. In mid-December, “Sport Bild” revealed that in the event of relegation, not a single FC Schalke 04 player would have a valid contract. The Royal Blues should have added an additional clause to the DFL’s standard contracts – but they didn’t do that. On the one hand, of course, it’s understandable because Schalke would never be able to financially service the contracts in the 3rd league, but on the other hand, this poses a danger that people are now increasingly fearing. The longer S04 is stuck in the relegation battle of the second division, the more likely a scenario becomes that would ultimately mean a complete loss of control. Because all players without a contract would of course be on the market free of charge in the event of relegation.
They are still trying to suppress the evil thoughts that this special contract situation could inevitably give rise to about Schalke – and would rather encourage their own fans to watch the important game on Saturday against Eintracht Braunschweig. Because after the game at Betzenberg, it wasn’t just Marc Wilmots who was fed up. But the legendary “fighting pig” knows that now, as so often, what matters is the last eternal bastion in the curves of the arena. And so Wilmots implores the Royal Blue supporters: “Support your team, support your club.” If that doesn’t help, the Belgian might have to think about chartering a bus and taking the team to one of the museum mines in the area. In the past, when he was still a player himself, that always helped.